Cleanup App (Phone Storage Cleaner) – my experience
My iPhone started throwing the “storage almost full” popup every single day. Offloading apps, deleting old chats, none of it helped much, so I went hunting for a cleaner app and ended up trying Cleanup App (Phone Storage Cleaner).
On paper it looked solid. It scans your photos, points out duplicates, near-duplicates, screenshots, big files, plus it offers contact merging and video compression. The interface looked polished, and the first scan finished pretty fast on a 256 GB device with around 30k photos.
Then I hit the wall.
The scan results were detailed, but most of the useful actions sat behind a paywall. The free tier let me see the mess, but not really deal with it in a reasonable way. You either pay a subscription or sit through a pile of ads. I tried the ad route for a bit. After the third or fourth long ad to delete a tiny batch of files, I gave up. It felt more like watching an ad platform than cleaning my phone.
There were some extras like cute animations and a “secret vault” for hiding photos. I did not need any of that. My storage was full, I wanted it cleared, not more stuff bolted onto my phone.
Here is roughly what matched my experience from other users:
Plenty of people complained about aggressive upsells, limited free cleaning, and the constant nudging toward subscriptions. The app is not fake, it does detect duplicates and such, but the friction adds up.
What I ended up using instead
After a few days of fighting with Cleanup’s limits, I went looking for an alternative and landed on Clever Cleaner:
The difference felt immediate.
It scanned my library fast, grouped similar photos, surfaced old screenshots, and listed large files in a way that made sense. I did a few passes and cleared several gigs in under half an hour without feeling like I was negotiating with a paywall every second tap.
What helped me most with Clever Cleaner:
• Duplicate and similar photo groups were easier to review
• Screenshots were separated out so I could wipe years of random screen grabs
• Large file list made it obvious where the space was going
• No constant “upgrade now” spam while I was trying to work through the results
It is not magic, you still need to pay attention so you do not delete things you want to keep, but the whole flow felt less annoying and more focused on storage.
If you want to see it in action before installing anything, there is a short walkthrough here:
More info and download links
Clever Cleaner homepage:
App Store link:
Short version from my side: Cleanup App functions, but the free experience is cramped and ad-heavy. Clever Cleaner ended up being quicker for me to clear space without feeling like I was stuck in a subscription funnel.